St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco was buzzing with activity on January 18 & 31.  Hundreds of individuals representing over 70 nonprofit and faith-based organizations are taking advantage of an unprecedented training opportunity being presented by San Francisco CARD and American Red Cross Bay Area Chapter. 

 

California Volunteers commissioned professionals throughout the state to deliver COOP training to nonprofits and faith-based organizations serving vulnerable populations.  Funding for the training is provided by California Volunteers and they also provided expert training to the grantees so that a consistent, standardized set of criterion are considered for the training. 

 

Largely modeled on the highly successful BayPrep Initiative, the COOP training helps organizations identify how to become disaster resilient.  Workshops are currently being conducted throughout the state which will be followed by one-on-one technical assistance in many jurisdictions.

 

"I am thrilled to see the level of engagement by organizations new to disaster preparedness," states SF CARD's Alessa Adamo.  "We coordinated with San Francisco's Office of the Controller to identify organizations in contract to the city so we could reach out to them and offer this free training.  And they are taking advantage of it in a big way." 

 

We also worked with Carla Johnson of The Mayor's Office on Disability and coordinated with them to have ASL interpreters for the workshops so that those individuals representing organizations with hearing disabilities could also take advantage of the training.  We could not have offered this service with out their help, and we owe them a debt of gratitude for helping us with these services.

 

Emily White is lead for American Red Cross Bay Area Chapter for this project and she, along with Elaine Howard have been outstanding collaborators on this project.  We couldn't be happier to be jointly working this project with our partners at the Red Cross.  They have helped put this project together from the start, providing valuable marketing expertise and supplies as well as logistical and workshop training support. 

 

Other workshop trainers included David Bonowitz, structural engineer presenting on facilities preparation, Greg Albrecht from Red Cross discussing communications issues, and Denise Cooke from Red Cross presenting on staff readiness.  Dan Fost, author of "Giants Past and Present," presented the opening day keynote address and gave a different perspective of preparedness from a sports related point of view as well as relating stories from the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake as the Giants and A's dealt with the event.  Of course the professional training staff of SF CARD, Alessa Adamo, Brian Whitlow and Elisabeth Whitney were on hand delivering training throughout the workshops.

 

The last session of the COOP training takes place February 14 from 8:30am - 1:00pm at St. Mary's Cathedral.  We will be conducting the remaining workshop sessions and concluding with an ICS (Incident Command System) tabletop exercise.  Following that will be the technical assistance provided by SF CARD staff through March and April.  For questions concerning the training, contact Elisabeth Whitney, Program Coordinator at SF CARD: 415-955-8946 x 253.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) went to the press on January 14th with news about a new type of disaster - the "ARkStorm" or "SuperStorm." A team of over 100 scientists, engineers, lifeline operators, emergency planners and insurance experts worked for two years to develop and analyze a computer model to explain "superstorms" from California's past. Experts say that California faces the risk of a massive superstorm which could flood a quarter of the state's homes and cause up to $700 billion in damage and economic impacts. Also, researches point out that the potential scale of the storm scenario could be four to five times the damage that could be wrought by a major earthquake. Flooding evacuation could involve 1.5 million residents in the California inland region and delta counties.

Yes, this sounds unbelievable! "It sounds like the plot of an apocalyptic action movie, but scientists with the USGS warned federal and state emergency officials that California's geological history shows such superstorms have happened in the past, and should be added to the long list of natural disasters to worry about in the Golden State" Source: Yahoo News. In 1861 to1862 a 300 mile stretch of the Central Valley of California was flooded. Apparently, the flooding was so bad that the state capital was moved to San Francisco, and the elected Governor Leland Stanford had to take a rowboat to his inauguration.   

K Street in Sacremento, looking east, 1861-62

Source: ARkStorm Report

The "ARkStorm Scenario," prepared by the USGS and released at the ARkStorm Summit in Sacramento on January 13-14, combines prehistoric geologic flood history in California with modern flood mapping and climate-change projections to produce a hypothetical, but plausible, scenario aimed at preparing the emergency response community for this type of hazard.      

 

The California superstorm has been dormant for the past 150 years, but even larger storms happened in past centuries, over the dates 212, 440, 603, 1029, 1418, and 1605, according to geological evidence. The ARkStorm Scenario predicts precipitation that in many places exceeds levels only experienced on average once every 500 to 1,000 years. Put another way, the storm could last more than a month, produce 125 mph wind speeds, and dump up to 10 feet of rain on California. Scientists say that the superstorm would be fed by an "atmospheric river," which is essentially a huge hose-like flow of moisture from the Pacific Ocean into California.   

Example of an "atmospheric river" courtesy of AP/National Weather Service

While such a storm is considered hypothetical, climate researchers warn "we think this event happens once every 100 to 200 years, which puts it in the same category as our big San Andreas earthquakes," said Lucy Jones, chief scientist of the USGS Multi-Hazards Demonstration Project and architect of ARkStorm. Scientists want to understand what modern-day California would face in the event of a devastating storm like this. "We create these scenarios to understand what the implications are for the types of very rare events that science tells us has to happen in our future," explained Lucy Jones.    

 

As we absorb this new disaster possibility, it is important to hear what others outside the project have to say on the subject. Dr Forbes, the Weather Channel's Severe Weather Expert, points out that this report portrays the worst-case scenario. He says this realistically could happen once or twice a millenium. The Weather Channel did an episode of "It could Happen Tomorrow," that focused on a storm which could overwhelm the levees in Sacramento Valley and again turn the area into an inland sea, as the 1861-62 storm did.   

   

So, I leave you with the thought that perhaps we, Californians, need to reconsider flood insurance in addition to earthquake insurance.

 

To see the ARkStorm film, visit This is ARkStorm on Vimeo.   

To read more about the ARkStorm, visit the ARkStorm Scenario Report.